Final Project Presentation

My research question is: What types of adaptive and assistive technologies are available in schools to help aid students in need? (schools ranging from elementary through college)

School systems I received information from and took picture at (of their technologies) include Warren Twp., Perry Twp., Franklin Twp., IUPUI Adaptive Education Services (Univ. Library), and Rise Special Services

* Introduction (its features)
Assistive technology is defined as any item, piece of equipment, or system of products that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities. Adaptive technology aids users by adapting content or user responses into a medium appropriate for the user. For example, screen readers "adapt" conventional text by converting it into content spoken by a synthetic voice, thereby making standard text accessible to blind students. (www.education-world.com)
* Works Cited
* (10) Assistive/Adaptive Technologies used in Indianapolis schools
* Each page includes: Description of technology, Features, Models Available, Software, or Publisher/Company, Users/Benefits, Issues, and Cost

I chose a blog for this assignment because I wanted to get it out on the Internet, creating a webpage would be too difficult for me right now, and this class is the first time I’ve ever blogged…wanted to try out more of its features.

How does what’s important fit into reading?
~Expansion of what we’ve talked about in class

Anything else to help me? Other technologies you’d like me to add?

Blog URL: http://adaptivetechw412.blogspot.com/

-AAK

Final Project Focus

Research Question: What types of adaptive technologies are available in schools to help aid students in need? And, possibly including what adaptive technologies should be available in schools? (schools ranging from elementary through college)
Information Gathering: I have already contacted Adaptive Education Services at IUPUI. I plan to have John Ault show me around the Adaptive Learning Center in University Library. I will have him show me the different technologies IUPUI offers, as well as take pictures of those technologies and gather information on what and how the technologies aid students with different disabilities. From there I will focus on adaptive technologies offered at middle schools and high schools, mainly focusing on the Indianapolis area. I have contacts at schools such as, Franklin Twp., Perry Twp., and Roncalli (Ryan from class). Finally, I will also take a look at adaptive technologies and elementary schools, Warren Twp. (Pleasant Run Elementary). I will take pictures of all the different technologies, learn about their capabilities, and do further research on their uses (books/scholarly sources).

Steps/Timeline: Next week, I’ll plan to visit the Adaptive Learning Center, and as soon as I can get to the other schools, I will. This week is their spring breaks, so next week and the week after, I’ll start contacting and visiting the schools hard. By the final two weeks before the project is due, I’ll be working on the extra research of the technologies, possibly even using interviews from the teachers/people who are in chare of using the technologies. And, then I’ll begin writing up what these technologies do, their uses, how they benefit students, and I’ll probably even include some their shortcomings.

Obstacles: I can see some schools may be busy or may not want me to take pictures of the technologies, but hopefully that’s hurdle I can overcome. I have enough contacts and helpful friends that I think even if one school turns me down I should be able to get enough information from another school or just by doing research on the internet. Gathering and organizing all the data and pictures will take the most work, but I’m already off to a good start, I think, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Questions: I don’t have any questions at this point. However, if you have any information on good sites/articles that talk about adaptive technologies in schools, I’d love to hear about them. Also, if you know of any schools that really do a great job of integrating these technologies, and they’re located in the area, that also would be helpful information.

Genre: I’ve definitely ruled out power point. I want to get my information on the web for public access. I was originally considering creating a website; however, I’ve been playing around with the features of Blogger, where you can add pictures and a new thing they have now is to add video/slide shows, so I think a blog (or a series of approx. 10 or more blogs about each of the different technologies) will be what I do. Each page will contain a picture of the adaptive technology, its name, other information about it, its uses, how it benefits students, and its shortcomings.
-AAK

Reading Notes 4/10/2007

"Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments" -Mary E. Hocks
(includes discussion of websites)

• Hybrid forms defined: "at once verbal, spatial, and visual" (631)
• Acknowledging hybridity "means that the relationships among word and image, verbal texts and visual texts, 'visual culture' and 'print culture' are all dialogic relationships rather than binary opposites" (631)
• "Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments actually offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important new pedagogy of writing as design" (632).
• Again it is brought up that digital rhetoric is an ongoing dialogue with both reader and writer.
• Audience stance: audience participation in online community. This includes reasons that may encourage or discourage audience activity (632).
• Transparency: "the ways in which online documents relate to established conventions like those of print, graphic design, film, and Web pages" (632).
• Hybridity: the combination of visual and verbal designs (632). (key word: multifaceted)
• In Anne Wysocki's "Monitoring Order," I agree with Hock's point about two-dimensionality. "Two-dimensional graphic design offers some guidance for designing web pages but it is also limited" (634) Wysocki's is this way. At first when I went to this site I was very annoyed. I'm used to copying and pasting the documents we need to read for class into a Word doc and then printing them out to read at my leisure. I didn't realize it would take that long, so I started clicking each box, highlighting the text, and pasting it into Word. By the end of all this, I was very annoyed. I do feel this clicking on the boxes, like turning a page in a book was a neat idea, but it did not help me so much for what I had planned for it.
• Boese's Xena website seems more typical to me. "An experience of open-ended possibility...not very transparent" (640). Xenaverse was cool. To me it was set up more like an interactive website, so I didn't really even try to copy and paste every page into a word document. I enjoyed the pictures, music, and place where readers could participate. I think she does a great job, like in a book, of listing a table of contents. She even provides a "How to read" section with navigational map. Even though I've never seen a full episode of Xena, I can tell this site was created with the Xenites in mind. Anyone can make a contribution(s) to the site.
• Teaching Visual Digital Rhetoric: create new designs/scrutinize current designs
• To build on this article it would be helpful to look at a guide for critique websites, which I'm sure deciding on specific guidelines is not an easy thing to do. I could see many debating what makes a good website and what doesn't...especially when "the pleasure" you get out of a website is one thing you're looking at.
• Storyboarding is helpful when creating one's own site
• Hocks concludes by saying those who participate in digital design "can see themselves as active producers of knowledge in their discipline" (652).

Reading Notes 4/4/2007

"Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs"
-Brooks, Nichols, Priebe (North Dakota State Univ)

• Blogs in classrooms (a.k.a. genres): journals, research tools, sharing ideas
• As discussed in class, people creates blogs for many different reason. (For education purposes, is far from the top of the list for reasons to blog)
• Weblogging= relatively low-tech
• Is it possible? Weblogs have the potential to "encourage that person to continue writing where he or she might otherwise stop" (1)
• "The writer who is self-motivated and community supported" (1)
• I could see where this vision, blogging for educational purposes, might anger some bloggers. Blogging for some is a place were people can vent, misspell, share opinions, say basically anything, and now it's being looked at as an educational tool. I support the use of the blog in the classroom; however, I can see some who may have mixed feelings about this...like at the beginning of this class when some classmates were not to thrilled about blogging class notes.
• This idea of motivation in students is nothing new.
• Research questions: "Which weblog genre(s) engage or motivate students to make significant contributions to their personal or class weblog?" (1)
• "The web is remediating all media that has come before it" (2)
• Research assumption: "An engaged and motivated weblog writer will become a better writer of other genres" (2)
• A pretty big difference to w/i a year to go from 79% to 52% students who had never heard of weblogs before their class (don't see many other surprises in the other tables)
• Five Points: Point 2: "In both semesters, our students preferred the journal weblog regardless of which course they were enrolled in, and as student awareness of weblogging increases, the personal, daily reflection seems likely to be the defining characteristic of weblogging" (again not much surprise there)
• Would be interesting to repeat this study today. I would go to show how much and how quickly technology is changing.
• The notebook=seems likely to be most successful
• From Point 5, seems like beginning with weblog is a great thing to do, before you start moving on to more advanced technologies in the classroom.

AAK

Reading Notes 4/3/2007

"We Can't Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies" -Cathy Davidson

• I think banning Wiki would be taking a step to far


• Davidson realizes the media exaggerated the real story, and after doing some research, she realizes that Middlebury College's history department's policy is that not only is Wiki not to be cited in paper, but the same goes for Encyclopaedia Britannica.


• I can understand that professors would want students to site scholarly source; however, it is important to note that those sources also have the possibility of containing errors.


• Davidson describes exactly what Alan mentioned in class about Wiki being a "collaborative, digital environment."


• I like the fact the Wiki's errors can be corrected quickly; however it is still somewhat of a Catch 22. If you are researching on Wiki come across and article that contains incorrect information that has not been corrected yet, you're out of luck.


• Davidson mentions other characteristics of Wiki: unites anonymous readers, is overall devoted to a common good, and deals with intellect, a community of lifelong learners


• "Why not make studying what it does and does not do part of research-and-methods?" -I agree


• In Davidson's Pokemon/Dinosaur analogy, I cannot see how knowing 500 Pokemon characters is equivalent to being able to name 500 dinosaurs. (What am I missing here?--possibly a different example would better explain a child's ability to memorize useful information)


• John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media seems to be working on some great research initiatives; anything to inspire children in schools is great!


• HASTAC- a site "sponsored by the Institute for the Future of the Book, a group dedicated to investigating how intellectual discourse changes as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens."


• Davidson goes back to Wiki and discuss how it may be a great resources, just as we discussed in class: "A quick and easy reference before heading into more-scholarly depths."


• It Wiki can be a great starting point.


• I think Davidson sums it all when she says, "Why rush to ban the single most impressive collaborative intellectual tool produced at least since the Oxford English Dictionary. [!!!]

Remediation, Genre, and Motivation blog coming soon!